Toyota Has Colour-Changing Paint Technology In The Works

Toyota has submitted a US patent application for colour-changing paint, which would enable owners to easily alter the colours of their vehicles.

Toyota submitted the application to the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) with the understanding that owners might wish to alter the paint colour to stay current with trends or simply to make a change, according to Motorauthority.com.

The carmaker says it has created paint that can change colour in response to light and heat, replacing the need for a laborious repaint or vinyl wrap. According to the application, a car would be parked in a garage bay surrounded on all sides by heating elements that resembled tunnels.
To finish the transformation, a light-emitting colour modulator device would be passed over the heated paint surface.

The colour modulator would basically act as the controller for this process, and Toyota suggests that it could be operated by a human operator or a robot. To find the ideal settings for a particular colour, it could speak with a distant server and temperature sensors built into the car's bodywork.

Toyota is not the first carmaker to experiment with colour-changing paint, though, as BMW showed off a similar technology on its iX electric SUV at CES 2022.

Millions of microcapsules suspended in an outer wrap produced the colour-changing effect that BMW employed, which was based on the electrophoretic technology found in e-readers. At the touch of a button, the exterior of these microcapsules changed from white to grey to black due to the circulation of pigments driven by an electric current.